The best phones for travel photography

This article might give you an insight into what to look for when researching a phone for travel purposes, but expect it to be obsoleted soon as newer technology gets released.

Travel photography with a mirrorless camera

If you take photographs solely with your phone, the majority of this article isn’t for you; however, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 does have good cameras. This is geared more towards the travel photographer that brings a dedicated camera e.g. a Sony a7rII. A few–generally heavier–cameras come with dual card slots, both in full-frame and crop. The Sony a7rIII and the Sony a9 both have dual card slots, so I expect Sony have decided to go in this direction for their cameras in the future.

The Sony a7rII is a well priced camera for travel photography at the moment, in my opinion. Most of Sony’s current generation mirrorless cameras allow an external USB power source to be used not only for charging but also to power the unit. This applies to the Sony a6000, Sony a63000, Sony a6500, Sony a7sII, Sony a7rII, Sony a7rIII and the Sony a9. Without meaning to delve too deep into Sony cameras, this article assumes your camera only has one memory card slot. If your camera has two card slots like the Sony a7rIII or the Sony a9, I’d be inclined to get a smaller phone albeit waterproof.

There are various features found within phones that a travel photographer, whether professional or amateur, will find useful on long hikes such as the Great Divide Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail, Appalachian trail, and whatnot:

Blood oxygen meter can be useful when hiking high altitudes–for most healthy people, this won’t be very important

Iris scanner

Paperless notes

Torch

The above list is in no particular order.

GPS Features

GPS features are found within nearly every smartphone currently on the market, whether that’s an Android, Apple or Windows based phone. For Geotagging photographs, I actually recommend something like a Garmin Fenix 3 Sapphire watch and the Garmin Fenix 5x is an even better GPS navigation device but more expensive. Both watches are lighter weight than a phone and are more efficient with electricity; they’re a highly useful device all around. Nonetheless, I think redundancy is important and a phone screen is definitely better for viewing maps.

Water Resistance

I think even if you’re only interested in hiking somewhere dry, like the Californian section of the Pacific Crest Trail, water resistance shouldn’t be overlooked. You can always put your phone in a sealed bag, but a water resistant phone gives you reassurance; in my opinion, it is inexcusable for a company not to include IP-68 water resistance at this point in time. For river crossings, the less items you have to worry about getting wet the better–for storms, too.

High Speed USB-OTG and backing up data

This is one of the more important features found within a phone if you’re a travel photographer. Most phones support USB-OTG but it’s really difficult to find information regarding the throughput speed of the USB port. In a real world scenario, you may wish to clone data from one SD card to a microSD card or to another SD card. The Garmin Fenix 3 Sapphire watch only allows you to record about 20MB of log files, which is fine if you’re hiking for a week or two, but if you are through-hiking the entire Pacific Crest Trail, you’ll need to move the data from the watch. The Garmin Fenix 5x has enough storage that you can hike for weeks at a time, but it’s always a bad idea to store all your eggs in one basket. The log files of a Garmin Fenix 5x are not very large and as such, a standard USB-OTG phone with USB 2.0 speeds will be fine, but if you are using a Sony a7rII and you want to backup your RAW photographs–which are about 82MB in size–you may consume several gigabytes of data in one day. This is where a high speed USB-OTG port is borderline essential.

Blood Oxygen

Blood Oxygen meters are not found within many phones and most of the time, it’s pretty much a gimmick. However, they can give you a clue as to how much oxygen is in the air, and at high altitudes this can be useful–especially if you have a heart condition. I wouldn’t make a purchase decision over this feature alone but it’s nice to have.

Iris Scanner

This feature is worth making a purchasing decision over as it’s extremely useful. It allows you to unlock your phone with gloves on, and this great at night when you’re cold. It works better in cold environments as the camera uses a form of thermal imaging. Despite saying this is worth making a purchasing decision over, there are only a few companies that do a good job of implementing this feature.

Paperless Notes

Writing down ideas, whether that’s a shopping list for a re-supply or a specific point of interest you wish to visit, is important. Every phone on the market has this feature and you don’t need to give it too much thought. What you may wish to consider is the applications available for writing notes and the way in which you write a note, again I’d suggest the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

Torch

Nearly every modern phone has a torch, and it provides a useful creative opportunity. For example, you can illuminate your tent and photograph it from the outside.

The various phones available

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is a great unit for those looking to hike long distance hiking trails. It has a fully functional iris scanner, high speed USB-OTG port, blood oxygen meter and more; it’s waterproof, the pen is a great tool to make notes (especially if you wear gloves) and it’s all around a great device. It’s not perfect though…

The screen is curved, making it difficult to find a rugged case. Its USB port is only USB 3.1 when one divide is connected, and it’s quite a large phone for travelling with. The video features and camera are nothing short of amazing though whether you have or don’t have a dedicated camera for photography, it’s worth keeping in mind.

Not everyone will buy a phone purely for the a specific long distance hiking trail, so you have to decide for yourself whether you wish to make sacrifices.

The Google Pixel and the Google Pixel XL

The Google Pixel and the Google Pixel XL. Both have a high speed USB-OTG port but they lack features to make it really stand out: there is no iris scanner, a blood oxygen level meter, a pen, reliable water resistance or even a microSD card slot. The microSD card slot isn’t a deal breaker if you plan to bring a typical SD memory card reader, providing the memory card reader can read an SD and a microSD card at the same time which MOST MEMORY CARD READERS CANNOT do. As a side note, I’ve written an article about various memory card readers and my suggestion would be to buy the Kingston Mobilelite G4 memory card reader.

It seems like I am slating the Google Pixel, and perhaps I am. Even if we exclude its high price point, it’s a pretty lacklustre device. There’s nothing outside of software to really excite you. That said, it’s primarily made by HTC and that should mean something–they make great devices. It’s extremely lightweight and it’s a solid device. What it does do, it does well. The operating system is likely the best on the market right now and it can achieve the primary objective, to clone SD cards. Now that the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 are here, it’s hard to recommend the Google Pixel or the Google Pixel XL.

One advantage to the non curved display is that you can put a glass screen protector on the front. I’m a huge fan of OLED technology and if you pick a black background, you can save a lot of battery life. Unlike an IPS LCD screen, an OLED pixel simply doesn’t illuminate when it shows black; whereas an IPS LCD still illuminates when showing black–thereby drawing more current. Both Samsung and Google offerings have OLED screens.

Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe and the Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe Special

The Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe and the Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe Special both have high speed USB-OTG ports; the standard Asus Zenfone 3 and the Asus ZenFone 3 Max have USB-C ports but they are the slower USB 2.0 standard.

They all have microSD card slots; they have fast processors; the software isn’t too bad but it could be better; the screens are worthy contenders too. The biggest reason to consider Asus is the fact they’re slightly cheaper (unlike the majority of their PC components) than the competition. Their phones are really well priced but I don’t trust them. The build quality doesn’t look as good and I have this nagging feeling the software will not be that reliable after a few months of use–this is somewhat judging from the various comments I have read.

Again, this device doesn’t have any water resistance. Therefore, you’re trading better software for the microSD card slot; the Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe and the Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe Special both have 6GB of ram but I doubt you’ll notice the difference.

HTC 10

This is a great device. As with other phones mentioned, it’s got a high speed USB-C, USB-OTG port, it has a 3.5mm headphone jack–unlike Apple, cough–and a microSD card slot (unlike the Google Pixel). Again, it’s not water resistant (well, technically both this and the Google Pixel have some form of water resistance, but they’re not IP-68 certified; you cannot submerge them fully.) This is an older device but the software is still better than many phones.

My biggest dislike for the HTC 10 is that it’s got an IPS LCD screen. I simply don’t like them after using an AMOLED display.

Sony Xperia XZ

The Sony Xperia XZ is a great phone, it has IP-68 water resistance, a microSD card slot and it does a lot of things right. Even the software is very good. If you wish to stray from a high speed USB port, I would look at this device. It does everything else quite well. It’s an extremely under-rated device.

Sony Xperia XZ Premium

This should be a great phone, with USB 3.1; my only complaints are that it’s slightly heavy and it doesn’t have an OLED screen.

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge phone is a worthy contender if you wish to forsake a high speed USB-port and go against my recommendation. There’s a few new software updates such as the always on display, which are extremely nice. It has water resistant and a blood oxygen meter. There’s a few features to make you happy, but it’s really not as good as newer models.

Samsung Galaxy S8

The Samsung Galaxy S8 has a high speed USB-port and in my opinion, it’s the second best phone on the market at this point in time; however, it too slows the speed of its USB port when multiple devices are connected (this might not be a problem for you.)

None of the Apple iPhones have high speed USB-OTG capability, for that reason I have ignored them from the get go. A few windows phones have a USB-C port with high speed USB-OTG capability but the software leaves little to be desired, the phones are rarely water resistant and there’s very few apps available.

It seems like I’ve listed a lot of devices, but when you look for a device with a microSD card slot, water resistance, and a high speed USB-OTG port, you’ll be disappointed. My advice is to get a Samsung Galaxy Note 8, Samsung Galaxy S8 or a Sony Xperia XZ Premium–in that order. I think hiking long distance trails without a way to backup SD card data is extremely reckless. The Google Pixel will have zero software issues, and it can put it in a ziplock bag most of the time but for me, there’s little reason to consider it giving how great Samsung phone are right now.

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